Customer expectations exceed banks' service capabilities

Although the concept of online banking has not taken off completely in this part of the world, Internet and advanced wireless connectivity technology are changing the way customers expect service delivery. Banks are under pressure to ramp up their customer contact operations, in order to not only live up to customer expectations but to survive competition.
Exhibiting at MEFTEC 2007 (The Middle East Financial Technology Exhibition & Conference) in Bahrain this month, Xceed Professional Services will be speaking to key players in the banking sector about how to adopt the global standard of customer service.

"With regional markets opening up to foreign banks, financial institutions will need to invest in bringing their resources up to speed, to retain their client base in the face of competition," said Ahmed Refky, Managing Director, Xceed Professional Services.

"Setting up a call centre, with an abundant number of seats and the most advanced telecommunication equipment is only one small step towards getting it right, especially in this day and age when advanced technology should be a 'given' as far as the customer is concerned. Leveraging this investment in terms of adopting the global standard of customer service and high performance management techniques are the only ways to guarantee an effective and profitable customer service operation and will ensure the right balance between service quality, customer satisfaction and costs."

A more scientific approach to measurement of customer satisfaction is required in order to highlight the specific areas where performance improvement is needed. It is important to measure dimensions associated with call centres as profit centres or competitive advantages, measure call duration, and work on first call resolution.

Refky continued, "The First Call Resolution, for example, has been found to be the single most important key challenge to improving customer satisfaction. The absence of First Call Resolution can account for a big part of a call centre's operational cost. For a long time to come, retail banking customers will continue to prefer speaking to a customer service representative rather than run an online transaction. This means that a financial institution's greatest asset is the people communicating with the customers. They need to be trained, developed and knowledgeable about every aspect of the bank's business."

Xceed Professional Services is the sole implementation partner for the Customer Operations Performance Centre Inc. (COPC Inc.), the global body for setting the customer service standards. The process of adopting the standard focuses on a number of aspects such as call handling time, first call resolution, service agent's knowledge of products and services and most importantly, the ability to listen to customers and efficiently provide them with a complete and accurate answer. The COPC-2000® CSP Standard, first released in 1996, is the first and only global certification designed specifically to guarantee contact centre excellence worldwide.

MEFTEC 2007 takes place at the Bahrain International Exhibition Centre from February 12th - 13th February, under the auspices of the Central Bank of Bahrain.